Where Are They Right Now?
For All Nails #144: Where Are They Right Now? a collective post by the entire FAN Cabal ---- :It's 3:02 am Greenwich Mean Time on the morning of 26 December 1974. On the island of Bali in the Kingdom of Australia's Indonesian protectorate, it is 11:02 am, and a fusion bomb has just been detonated near a vacation resort on the north shore. CARL SALAZAR, President of Kramer Associates, is part of a mushroom cloud rising above the island, as are several thousand of his fellow KA executives and fifty thousand innocent bystanders. The senior surviving member of the KA organization is the Deputy Director of the Factfinding & Forecasting Division of United Dry Goods, PAUL SEBASTIAN. Sebastian is at KA's corporate headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan, trying to find out what has happened to the video feed from the corporate conference in Bali. At an undisclosed location somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, it is two minutes past the hour on the evening of 25 December. VINCENT MERCATOR is watching the vitavised broadcast of a speech he recorded earlier that day. As always, he is highly critical of his performance, and thinks that if he had only done just one more take, he would have achieved just the right tone of righteous indignation. In Palo Alto, California it is 7:02 pm on the evening of 25 December. BOBBY and ANNA CONTRERAS are sitting on a sofa in the living room of their apartment, watching Mercator's speech on the vita. Bobby is holding Anna in his arms. It is also 7:02 pm at Pancho's Fly-In just outside of Theodore AAS. Lt. EMILIO LACROIX Y COSTILLA is in the middle of one of his better Wednesday nights, having just gotten the number of that good-looking brunette lieutenant who works in the Radio Shed on base. He is trying to wake up Sergeant Fernandez, who is still apparently comatose in his usual face-down position on the bar, so he can tell him un chiste which that Tory space pilot girl he met several months earlier would have disapproved of. PANCHO BARNES hangs up the telephone behind the bar with an unusually loud clack of plastic meeting plastic, and strides over to the vita. A unanimous groan rises from the cliente, who were eagerly watching the evening's tlachti match between the Mexico City Aztecs and the Veracruz Conquistadors. Then, they see what he has changed the channel to. Emilio Lacroix turns to Pancho. His eyes are still half-fixed on the vita and he holds the half-empty bottle of Liberty Cap. "I need something stronger right now," he murmurs. In Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City it is 8:02 pm. Mexican President IMMANUEL MOCTEZUMA is watching Mercator's speech and swearing nonstop at his vitavision set. Chief of Staff CHEWY ENCISO at his apartment a few blocks away, and Secretary of State MARIA DEL REY at her house outside the city, are also watching in stunned disbelief. Each is thinking that it's time to telephone Moctezuma. In another part of Mexico City, HAROLD PICKETT is packing his belongings in preparation for vacating his apartment. He has been getting ready to move to the CNA on a permanent basis, and was just about to turn off the vita so he could pack it. His hand stops an inch from the button, and his jaw drops in surprise at what he sees. He decides to redouble his moving efforts. It is also 8:02 pm in suburban Acapulco. Former First Lady of Mexico and estranged wife IMELDA FAYE DEL VALLE MERCATOR is sitting with her daughter and son-in-law, BONITA and MIGUEL DONNELLY, and their three children, ANGELICA, BELINDA, and CRAIG. Imelda begins talking at the vitavision set: "It never ends. It never ends! Even by remote control you wreck every single Christmas we have together!" In Henrytown, Jefferson it is 9:02 pm. ERNESTO NUCHE, along with the rest of the Henrytown Mercury-Reporter newsroom staff, stares at the vita screen in silence. Outwardly expressionless, Nuche is thinking, What a year! The firing, the trial, the scandal, the assault, the election, and now this. A reporter's dream. He starts wondering which of his old contacts in the War Department are still good, and how many stories he'll be able to get out of this. In New Orleans it is also 9:02 pm. ROBERT CONTRERAS is watching a vitavision station broadcasting from over the border in Lafayette, Jefferson while holding a sobbing CONNIE MAGLIAZZI. Robert himself is dry-eyed and totally expressionless. At the University of New Orleans, MARIE-CLAIRE REYNARD, back from Vespers at the campus's grandiose Basilica of the Holy Cross, has stepped into the packed front sitting room of Pangborn Hall dormitory. Her just-removed chapel veil is folded neatly in her hands, until her fists suddenly clench and rumple the white lace. In a moment, she is swept into the crowd of fellow students, all their gazes glued to the vitavision set. And all of a sudden, a shudder runs through the packed room and everyone pulls their friends closer in fright. Her dark eyes well up with tears, and she begins to pray. It also 9:02 pm in the affluent Michigan City suburb of Evanston. JACK ELLISON, the nominal President of Kramerica, PLC, is drinking his Christmas cognac and holding his wife's shaking hand as he watches a special bulletin on the vita. He feels a bittersweet mixture of sympathy for the dead, and a sense of excitement that there are no more "Taiwanese Twits" above him in the KA organization to tell him how to run his business. In Burgoyne it is 10:02 pm. Governor-General LENNART SKINNER is sitting in bed beside his wife in the Executive Palace, talking frantically on the phone with his Foreign Minister, MICHAEL MURPHY. It is also 10:02 in Black Rock, N.Y. The man going by the name of JOHN HANSON is watching a skaters game on vitavision when the action is interrupted for an urgent bulletin. He leans forward with interest and shock. He wonders if it may be a good thing that his connections with the Mexican War Department have been severed now that Mercator is going to be a cursed name worldwide. It is also 10:02 pm in Quebec City. LUCIEN REYNARD, second-rate Surete bureaucrat, looks up from his newspaper and stares at the vita in dull incomprehension of the frantic French-language newswoman struggling to get out a breaking story that, for once, fills him with utter horror. He looks away and his eyes fall on his wife. She is seated on the sofa next to him, and she fingers the beads of an old rosary nervously. It is also 10:02 in Concord, Massachusetts. GEOFFREY BILD is at home asleep with his wife and child. It is the first time he has been at home this early in many weeks. He has no idea that his wife CAROLINE is already planning to introduce him to the intricacies of Family Court in the CNA. It is also 10:02 p.m. in New London, Connecticut, where CLARISSA FORSTER is making a rare holiday visit to her family. Her alter-ego ABBY BARTLET is away from the North Woods, allegedly with her own relatives in New Hampshire. As the Forsters sip port in their parlor, an announcer suddenly interrupts the radio broadcast of Handel's Messiah. It is also 10:02 pm in Bogotá, New Granada. In their richly decorated bedroom in the Royal Palace, KING FERNANDO and QUEEN SOPHIA are asleep in each others' arms. Sophia is in the process of conceiving Fernando's child. In a bare room in another part of Bogotá, General GUILLERMO TINTOREO, FANG (Ret.), lies awake in the tangled sheets of his own bed, still unable to go to sleep. The convulsions of his waking mind, the fruit of what he saw in Grão Pará, have been stilled by the thirty-three days of preparation that led to his consecration and full entrance into the Knights of the Immaculata, but his dreams are occasionally visited by blood and silent screams. He feels he will be having one tonight, and he tries to remember the festive polyphony of the Vespers liturgy he attended hours earlier that evening at the church of San Juan. The Latin words of the Magnificat come to mind, and he quietly dissects them, wondering if they hold a message for him in his torment. Fecit potentiam in brachio suo; dispersit superbos mente cordis sui. Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles. He has shown his might with his arm; He has scattered those who harbored pride in their hearts. He has brought potentates down from their thrones and He has raised the humble. It is also 10:02 pm in the air over the newly-conquered New Granadan province of Grão Pará. Ex-Lt. ALEXANDRA STAPLETON, now working as a bush pilot for a Bogotá-based freight company, is swearing like a sailor as she wrestles with the controls of her small, aging airmobile. It is also 10:02 pm off the coast of Havana, Cuba. FELIPE and ASTRID JACKSON are on board the Jonquille, getting a fix on the signal carrying Mercator's transmission. 400 miles to the east, in another ship, TIMOTHY LIDDY and JOAN KAHN are getting a second fix on the signal. In Guantanamo, Cuba, SEBASTIAN QUEZADAS sits at a desk pushing papers around, his leg in a cast, wishing that someone had bothered to install a heating system in the building. Even Cuba can get chilly in December! As he wonders why he misses Lucia so much -- after all, she's just a stripper -- Joe Talvi sticks his head in the door. "Uh, Sebo? I think you'll wanna see this." It is 11:02 p.m. at the Green Moose Tavern in Sunbury, Nova Scotia. ADAM LaDUKE is indeed near a vitavision by eleven, as he has been instructed to be by THE GENERAL. His first thoughts at the news are of the whereabouts and safety of his sort-of girlfriend Abby. His second thoughts are of how his employer could have known of such an event in advance. Due to one of the planet's most idiosyncratic time zones, it is 11:32 p.m. in Quoyle Harbor, British Newfoundland. CARMEN VALENZUELA is sleeping off the effects of Christmas dinner with her colleagues at the small Danielloise health clinic. For some reason, she is dreaming of her USM Medical Corps training in the treatment of radiativity trauma. It is 3:02 am in London. Foreign Secretary EUSTACE SUDBURY is on the phone with the British ambassador to the USM. When he hangs up, he'll place a call to a sleeping Prime Minister SIR GEOFFREY GOLD. Meanwhile, in a ratting den in Whitechapel, a number of sportsmen are placing wagers with an incognito KING HENRY X. It is also 3:02 am in Paris. Premier YVETTE FANCHON is asleep in her bedroom in the Palace of the Republic. She is having the dream where her great-grandfather stares down at her from his portrait in silent disapproval. General ERIC VON GELLMANN is asleep beside his wife in his bedroom in the German Embassy. He is dreaming of Yvette Fanchon. It is also 3:02 am in Ségou, Ghana. ANDRÉ-PHILIPPE MAETERLINCK, suffering from jet-lag, walks the streets of the Ghanian capital, pondering his upcoming interview with Paramount King VICTOR FONTAINE. It is 4:02 am in Copenhagen. KING CHRISTIAN GUSTAV is in his bedroom in the Royal Palace, on the phone with his ambassador to the USM. It is also 4:02 am in Berlin. Chancellor DAVID GRAUER is padding through the west wing of the Chancellery building in his dressing gown and slippers, a bowl of cherries in his hands. Exterior Minister JOSHUA MERKEL, in the bedroom of his house in the Bendlerstrasse, has just been awakened by a call from Ambassador GERHARD EICHEL in Mexico City. Meanwhile, in the study of his house in Potsdam, former Defense Minister HORST VOTH, who has long since come to terms with his unpublicized state of house arrest, is hard at work on the fourteenth chapter of his political thriller, "The Mancunian Candidate". It is also 4:02 am in Warsaw. KING FREDERICK has just woken from a terrible nightmare he can no longer remember. He is still shivering in reaction. It is also 4:02 am in Luanda, Angola. President JOAO PEDRO VIEIRA is absently smoking a cigar while trying to decide whether a certain journalist has become too critical of his regime. The phone at his desk has just begun ringing. In Gaborone, Botswana, it is 5:02 a.m. Most of the time, Prime Minister SERETSE NKATE would be working late, savoring the freedom from distraction that comes with the predawn hours. Up until a few minutes ago, he was doing so today. Now, however, he is listening with horror to the speech coming over the radio. As the speech winds down, he picks up the telephone on his desk and dials Cape Town. It is also 5:02 am in Cape Town. QUEEN ALEXANDRA, an early riser, is on her way downstairs to the kitchen in the private wing of the Royal Residence. There is a phone ringing in the distance. Most Bedou have never heard of standardized time, and those who have eschew it as a German, anti-Islamic innovation. Thus to the three Bedou waiting with Colonel L. E. THOMAS in the Negev desert, it is 5:22 by local solar time, about two hours before sunrise. They are not concerned with explosions on the other side of the world because they are waiting for a smaller but still significant explosion here -- one that they hope will rid Palestine of several of its pro-German Jewish settlers. It is 6:02 am in Nairobi. VICTORIA MADOKA is asleep after a long, long Christmas Day. She is dreaming again about visiting Letitia Ntimana in Nyeri Prison, and not being allowed back out. The clocks in the Geminae space capsule are set to 22:02 hours, but EVANGELINE GILMORE and GINA TURCHETTA don't care. They are watching in fearful disbelief as the white light spreads across the tropics north of Australia. ---- Forward to For All Nails #145: Bad News in Bogotá. Forward to 26 December 1974: Ghosts Appear and Fade Away. Return to For All Nails. Category:American War Category:Kramer Associates Category:Contreras family Category:Ev and Alex Category:USM politics Category:CNA politics Category:Pickett Category:New Granada Category:Caribbean Category:Timothy Liddy Category:Joan Kahn Category:Clarissa/Abby Category:Carmen Valenzuela Category:Great Britain Category:Germany Category:Yvette Fanchon Category:Scandinavia Category:King Frederick of Poland Category:Victoria